I don't think you understand rights. Rights are not granted by a government. Citizens grant powers to their government. The government may be in the habit of not recognizing such rights, but they still exist.

For the sake of comparison, here's some other companies making money off the Linux kernel that could easily fund the lobbying and publicity efforts: Google 1.2%, Nokia 2.5%, IBM 2.9%, and many others whose contributions were too small to measure, although I'm pretty sure it will be a cold day in hell before IBM lobbies to abolish software patents.

http://lwn.net/Articles/395961/

Why exactly should Red Hat be the ones forced to stick their neck out? It would be nice if they did, but they are under no obligation to do so and haven't "screwed" anyone. Perhaps you've forgotten that Red Hat is a huge contributor to the community in the form of code, unlike certain other popular distributions. They made their money on the backs of their employees.

c:\Windows\bfsvc.exe is clearly more intuitive and well named. OSX has the same cryptic underpinnings as Linux, and it doesn't seem to be hurting its adoption rate by regular Joes. I'm not sure what being a "hyper-involved PC-user (building and fixing your own and others with tons of tweaks)" has to do with it either. Competence in one area does not imply or guarantee competence in another. If you sat me down in front of VMS today, I might still be able to pull up the editor, and I've been using computers daily since 1982. Is that DECs fault or simply my lack of knowledge? Now get off my lawn.

Many states also have a usage tax to combat exactly what you're suggesting.

You're probably trolling, but just in case you're not, I would suggest that you read it again. Notice where it says the right of the people, not the right of the militia. The Supreme Court seems to agree with this interpretation with its rulings on District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. If you don't like it, I would suggest you lobby to have the second amendment repealed.

I call bullshit. Metal is still going, and it's never had a broad appeal. If what you say is true, it would have been one of the first genres to collapse. The money is gone from shitty music.

California is crazy. People are fond of making fun of places like Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, but at least they don't spend their time passing stupid crap like this into law.

Dell does sell support contracts that connect you to clueful call center people that are located in the US. You pay for that with the premium price of Apple, and Dell offers it as an option at $338/2 years or $478/3 years on the $600 system I looked at on their site. I haven't checked, but I'm sure that the other major manufacturers offer it as an option as well.

You voted with your wallet. Good for you. Things won't change until more people do. These companies are giving people what they're asking for, the cheapest possible product.

I've used Dell tech support. I would not tell people the same thing. In your case, if that's the standard script they use for diagnosing noise, it's the standard script. None of these companies hire rocket scientists for tech support. You couldn't afford the machines if they did.

I also had a motherboard replaced by Gateway for free around 1994-1995 after the warranty had expired. I've also had pretty good experiences with Dell for others. The only company that's really given me any grief was HP.

I just checked and their are more commercial fisherman ~15,000 than people employed at the Baton Rouge refinery ~6500. The numbers didn't break down those that fish in and around the gulf vs elsewhere, but I'd wager that at least 1/2 of them are around the gulf. Oil, natural gas, and chemicals still crush fishing in dollars though.

Can you provide relevant citations? I live on Louisiana, and my anecdotal evidence says otherwise. Since you're including areas as vague as tourism, be sure to keep in mind pipeliners, shipping via riverboats, our chemical plants, Exxon in Baton Rouge that probably employees more people than all of the commercial fisherman in Louisiana, etc.

I also am a white Southern male like the grandparent. Imagine how hard it is to keep a culture going when the rest of the world ridicules it with stereotypes of being inbred ignorant buffoons.